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The day the sludge stopped
By adamg on Wed, 12/24/2014 - 8:34am
Today's the anniversary of the day in 1991 when workers for the new MWRA turned a valve that stopped sewage sludge from pouring into Boston Harbor from an antiquated treatment plant at Deer Island. Paul Levy, who oversaw construction of the new treatment plant, the one with the giant eggs, recalls:
Instead of having a big event with elected and regulatory officials who would have stolen the scene, we quietly went to Deer Island and--with the guys who had loyally and with little support run the treatment plant for years--went down into a vault and--at 10:23am--simply shut off the sludge discharge line.
Free tagging:
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More on this ,
More on this ,
"On July 21, 1999, a team of five divers entered the Deer Island sewage-treatment outfall tunnel, a key portion of a multibillion-dollar project, considered a feat of modern engineering, aimed at cleaning up polluted Boston Harbor. The tunnel was virtually completed, save for the removal of plugs that had been inserted to prevent flooding and ensure the tunnel-builders’s safety.
Unfortunately two of the divers would die that day and three others would barely escape the tunnel’s pitch-black, airless atmosphere. That fatal disaster marks the starting point of Neil Swidey’s “Trapped Under the Sea,’’ a dramatic examination of the world of commercial diving and the risks and dangers that accompany it."
http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/books/2014/02/15/book-review-trapped-und...
That's a different project
The sewage diffusers came later - the most important thing was to get the sludge into treatment. There are about 10 years between these projects.
That doesn't make it any less horrible for the people involved with this negligence, and the jerry-rigged oxygen system that was never properly tested or certified any less negligent.
Sludge
That's because elected officials usually only increase the flow of sludge. Very few of them know how to stop it.
(Thanks for throwing the hanging curve, Adam!)